“The reason StartCon didn’t go to Melbourne this year is because Philip Dalidakis and his team couldn’t deliver on what they agreed upon in a signed letter,” Barrie charged back.

“The Minister and his team tried to re-trade on multiple points including marketing support, and his department were unable to turn around a basic sponsorship agreement in five months despite repeated prodding, to the point of absurdity.

“Absurdity, in that our Deputy CFO got sick of prodding so many times, his emails deteriorated to single question marks.”

On the allegation that the entire deal had been culled over a lack of cooperation on gender diversity targets for speakers, Barrie said “this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

“We have not had a single conversation with anyone from the Victorian Government, or LaunchVic, about gender diversity,” he said.

Barrie alleged that the first mention of gender diversity targets came “out of the blue”, several months after negotiations between the parties had already broken down.

He called the Minister’s allegations “reprehensible” and said that “the StartCon team is upset at being used as a diversity punching bag.”

The next StartCon will occur in Sydney in November. Barrie said it would have around 3000 attendees and be "the biggest" yet.